Per the Center for Disease Control, latest figures (2005) show 30,694 firearm deaths (all races, all ages, both sexes) in the United States. For that same year, there were 43,443 automobile accident deaths in the United States.

"What are the facts? Again and again and again-what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history”--what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!" R. A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love"There's only three tempos: slow, medium and fast. When you get between in the cracks, ain't nuthin' happenin'." Ben Webster

I have mixed feelings about gun control, but I get ballistic (see what I did there :) ?) when people throw out statements without facts. I heard several broadcast pundits refer to the weapons used in Connecticut as "assault weapons". That kind of hyperbole adds nothing but confusion to what should be a reasoned discussion."There's only three tempos: slow, medium and fast. When you get between in the cracks, ain't nuthin' happenin'." Ben Webster

I have mixed feelings about gun control, but I get ballistic (see what I did there :) ?) when people throw out statements without facts. I heard several broadcast pundits refer to the weapons used in Connecticut as "assault weapons". That kind of hyperbole adds nothing but confusion to what should be a reasoned discussion.

The rifle used in this recent killings was indeed an "assult" weapon and the official title of the rifle is: "Bushmaster A1 M4 Carbine .223 caliber assault rifle"! So "Active Ink Slinger" get YOUR facts correct before giving out "shit" information. In addition, the killer also had two pistols that he used in his assult!

Three weapons were recovered from the school: a semi-automatic .223 Bushmaster found in a car in the school parking lot, and a Glock and a Sig Sauer found with Lanza's body, a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said. The weapons were legally purchased by Lanza's mother, the official said.

As we all know, gun ownership in the U.S. is a volatile subject. When incidents such as the shooting today causes peoples emotions to rise to the surface,(rightfully so) and people tend to rage over situations. The thing is, we tend to look for the simple solution as in taking away all guns to prevent future tragedies. The solution is not that simple. We have to look at ourselves as a nation, and ask the question what are we doing that creates an atmosphere that lets us feel that violence is the answer. There are countries around the world that allow the private ownership of weapons and do not have the problems that we are having. Why is that?

I think that we have to look at the aggressive culture that we have embraced in this country. Between the ultra violent videogames and movies, and the notion that if we are slighted in the least, violent retrabution is an acceptable response, we are teaching our youth that violence is the answer to their problems.

We need to start teaching that guns and violence are not the solution.

You also have to look at law enforcements response time to situations. By the time the police arrived and entered the school, the event was over. They were not able to save one person in that situation, and I hate to say it, but if there had been a person there with a legally concealed weapon, is it not possible that lives could have been saved?

A terrible tragedy happened, many lives were lost, but to focus the blame on guns as opposed to the mentally ill person who comitted the terrible act is akin to blaming a person looking like they have money instead of the criminal for getting mugged.

1st off the rifle was NEVER used to kill any of the victims in Conn. 2nd) FBI reports that 750,000 crimes were stopped by armed citizens in 2012. 3rd) Guns don't just jump off the shelf and say lets go shoot people,PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE!!! All the guns were registered legally!!The man was mentally disturbed and killed his own mother.STOP BLAMING THE GUNS and start blaming HUMANS!!!Just watch whats going on,and has gone on for centuries,around the world!!!Wake up and smell the coffee,when gang members buy guns off the street and break in your house and kills everyone in it but you,you'll wish you had a gun!When the govt's jack booted thugs come to drag you away,you'll want a gun handy!!Time to realise society is breaking down,PEOPLE are whacked out and everytime this happens,lets blame the guns!! I feel sad for those families,but if they had ARMED guards in their school it would've never gone that far!!

Wake up and smell the coffee,when gang members buy guns off the street and break in your house and kills everyone in it but you,you'll wish you had a gun!

When the govt's jack booted thugs come to drag you away,you'll want a gun handy!!

Time to realise society is breaking down,PEOPLE are whacked out and everytime this happens,lets blame the guns!!

I feel sad for those families,but if they had ARMED guards in their school it would've never gone that far!!

Hyperbole much?

When and if the US Governments jack-booted thugs decide to implement the vaunted NWO by force, our assault rifles and semi-automatic 357's, 9mm's and Uzis aren't going to even slow them down.

You pay attention to things like armed drones 'we' have employed over other countries for the last ten years? 'We' have these things called M1A1 tanks. I'd like to see you in the street with your AK47 - taking on a contingent of the jack-booted thugs.

Armed guards - yeah...that's what I wanna see... armed guards (the precursor to your jack-booted thugs) all over the freak'n place.

There are whacked out people all over this country. Thanks for identifying one of them for us.Obscenity is the last refuge of an inarticulate motherfucker.

1st off the rifle was NEVER used to kill any of the victims in Conn. 2nd) FBI reports that 750,000 crimes were stopped by armed citizens in 2012. 3rd) Guns don't just jump off the shelf and say lets go shoot people,PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE!!! All the guns were registered legally!!The man was mentally disturbed and killed his own mother.STOP BLAMING THE GUNS and start blaming HUMANS!!!Just watch whats going on,and has gone on for centuries,around the world!!!Wake up and smell the coffee,when gang members buy guns off the street and break in your house and kills everyone in it but you,you'll wish you had a gun!When the govt's jack booted thugs come to drag you away,you'll want a gun handy!!Time to realise society is breaking down,PEOPLE are whacked out and everytime this happens,lets blame the guns!! I feel sad for those families,but if they had ARMED guards in their school it would've never gone that far!!

That is a claim made up by the NRA. It is completely untrue.

The FBI does not produce those figures. There are various pro-gun groups that have analyzed FBI figures and made a bunch of spurious assumptions to produce that sort of claim but the FBI does not track them.

Unfortunately the gun nut lobby is as fact free as the rest of the reich-wing media.

Originally, the police stated that "... a caliber .223 Bushmaster rifle was found in the car, which was out in the parking lot." They also said that all the shootings took place in two rooms of the school. The first statement tells me that a Remington .223 "Bushmaster" was found near the site of the shootings. Now, I happen to know that the "Bushmaster" was available in several configurations. At least one of those configurations is with a wooden full stock, and with receiver drilled and tapped for scope mount. One configuration was with folding shoulder stock, protruding pistol grip, muzzle flash suppressor, and large capacity magazine. The former is not, by any jurisdiction's definition, an assault weapon, and the latter is an assault weapon under all jurisdictions which define the term. But the police did not specify the configuration of the rifle found in the car. And, in either case, that the rifle was in the car and all shootings took place inside the building, tells me that the rifle was not used in the shootings. From that, I deduce the shootings must have been by one or both of the handguns found in the building, along with the (at that time) assumed shooter.

Then, sometime last night, the medical examiner opined that all the wounds were caused by rifle. From that statement, I deduce that something is going on here; I am not sure what, but it begins to sound as if someone in authority has an axe to grind, and is trying to use this incident to his advantage. I am inclined to suspect the medical examiner is wrong in his assessment of the wounds. I feel certain that investigators will find, or have found, both spent shell casings and projectiles at the scene. From those, they will deduce what weapons were used. Whether that information will be made public is unpredictable at thgis stage.

Fact: The Federal Assault Weapons Ban speifically described what is required to have a weapon classed as an "assault weapon". Thus far, (11:30 AM,EST December 16) the rifle in question has not been speciffically described by any news outlet such that a determination could be made whether it is indeed an "assault weapon", or merely branded as such by the manufacturer.

So I say this to the pundits of the world: Give me the facts, dammit, and let me draw my own conclusions, thank you very much."There's only three tempos: slow, medium and fast. When you get between in the cracks, ain't nuthin' happenin'." Ben Webster

Per the Center for Disease Control, latest figures (2005) show 30,694 firearm deaths (all races, all ages, both sexes) in the United States. For that same year, there were 43,443 automobile accident deaths in the United States.

The primary purpose of automobiles is not to kill. Guns, however, are designed to kill; thats thrir primary purpose. It's not a very good comparison.

EDIT: I see you were refuting a previous claim about guns vs cars. I just wish people would stop comparing the two.

The facts are that the lives of 20 children and 7 adults have been tragically, senselessly, snuffed out, and people on here are arguing about whether cars kill more or less people than firearms, and whether the weapon used to kill those 20 children is technically an 'assault rifle' or not.

A large scale school killing took place in Japan awhile back, perpetrated by a knife-wielding maniac. The guy in Connecticut could just have easilly klled those beautiful innocent children with a baseball bat like hunters killing harbor seals.

Baseless and inflamitory calls for extremes of gun control measures that won't solve the problem have no place, ByronLord. Yours is just another babbling voice in the din.

The problem isnt guns the problem is we arent tking cre of our own. I had heard the young man had a personality disorder. Healthcare in this country sucks. There is NO psychiatric help available. I believe it was more than a personality disorder more ike a major affective disorder like shizo affective schizo typical or maybe even full blown schizophrenia and that young at 20. He had to show signs but was never recognized. The Gabbie Giffords shooting, the tradgedy at Virginia Tech even going back to Oklahoma City all of these people were mentally Ill. We tend to ignore those people but if a guy murders a couple of people he was retrded and didnt know what he was doing t the time Oh remember Jeffery Dahmer he was sick as well. We dont treat or use anytiype of therapy on those that need it but for those who do the wrong thing the justice system buys that they need help and let someone ike that use an anke braceet and stay in house arrest. These ppl need to be sorted out placed where they need to go maybe for the remainder of their lives but It isnt GUNS or Cars or Cigaretts. Mobius you are 100% right had he really wanted to kill he could have done it with a bat or a fly swatter. He would have found a way. That is the way a mentally Ill mind works. This kid wanted to be noticed by everyone even if it meant that his life would be taken in the process and that certainly did happen didnt it!

Of course he was mentally ill. All those people you refer to were.Hitler was mentally ill.If Hitler had a nuclear weapon, wouldn't you do everything you could to stop him using it, and make sure other madmen couldn't get one?

Angie57 wrote:

The problem isnt guns the problem is we arent tking cre of our own. I had heard the young man had a personality disorder. Healthcare in this country sucks. There is NO psychiatric help available. I believe it was more than a personality disorder more ike a major affective disorder like shizo affective schizo typical or maybe even full blown schizophrenia and that young at 20. He had to show signs but was never recognized. The Gabbie Giffords shooting, the tradgedy at Virginia Tech even going back to Oklahoma City all of these people were mentally Ill. We tend to ignore those people but if a guy murders a couple of people he was retrded and didnt know what he was doing t the time Oh remember Jeffery Dahmer he was sick as well. We dont treat or use anytiype of therapy on those that need it but for those who do the wrong thing the justice system buys that they need help and let someone ike that use an anke braceet and stay in house arrest. These ppl need to be sorted out placed where they need to go maybe for the remainder of their lives but It isnt GUNS or Cars or Cigaretts. Mobius you are 100% right had he really wanted to kill he could have done it with a bat or a fly swatter. He would have found a way. That is the way a mentally Ill mind works. This kid wanted to be noticed by everyone even if it meant that his life would be taken in the process and that certainly did happen didnt it!

1st off the rifle was NEVER used to kill any of the victims in Conn. 2nd) FBI reports that 750,000 crimes were stopped by armed citizens in 2012. 3rd) Guns don't just jump off the shelf and say lets go shoot people,PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE!!! All the guns were registered legally!!The man was mentally disturbed and killed his own mother.STOP BLAMING THE GUNS and start blaming HUMANS!!!Just watch whats going on,and has gone on for centuries,around the world!!!Wake up and smell the coffee,when gang members buy guns off the street and break in your house and kills everyone in it but you,you'll wish you had a gun!When the govt's jack booted thugs come to drag you away,you'll want a gun handy!!Time to realise society is breaking down,PEOPLE are whacked out and everytime this happens,lets blame the guns!! I feel sad for those families,but if they had ARMED guards in their school it would've never gone that far!!

1st) Why wouldn't they kill me too? 2nd) Why are gov't jack-booted thugs coming to drag me away? I've lived in this country my whole life, and I've never known the govt to show up and drag people off. You said "when" not "if." You honestly believe this stuff? 3rd) After reading this, you have more than confirmed that PEOPLE are whacked out. I probably have more to fear from PEOPLE than gov't jack-booted thugs.

Honestly, after reading your post, it scares the shit out of me that you might (probably do) own weapons.

P.S. I'm sure you've learned by now that the Bushmaster was used to kill the majority if not all all those innocent people, so does that change your argument?

The problem isnt guns the problem is we arent tking cre of our own. I had heard the young man had a personality disorder. Healthcare in this country sucks. There is NO psychiatric help available. I believe it was more than a personality disorder more ike a major affective disorder like shizo affective schizo typical or maybe even full blown schizophrenia and that young at 20. He had to show signs but was never recognized. The Gabbie Giffords shooting, the tradgedy at Virginia Tech even going back to Oklahoma City all of these people were mentally Ill. We tend to ignore those people but if a guy murders a couple of people he was retrded and didnt know what he was doing t the time Oh remember Jeffery Dahmer he was sick as well. We dont treat or use anytiype of therapy on those that need it but for those who do the wrong thing the justice system buys that they need help and let someone ike that use an anke braceet and stay in house arrest. These ppl need to be sorted out placed where they need to go maybe for the remainder of their lives but It isnt GUNS or Cars or Cigaretts. Mobius you are 100% right had he really wanted to kill he could have done it with a bat or a fly swatter. He would have found a way. That is the way a mentally Ill mind works. This kid wanted to be noticed by everyone even if it meant that his life would be taken in the process and that certainly did happen didnt it!

I knew Timothy McVeigh. He was not mentally ill. He was a gun nut but he was not delusional.

Now it does seem like he might have blown his mind with home made amphetamines. But that is a rather different issue.

Better mental health care is important for its own sake. But it isn't a panacea. If you have a person who is a bit on the edge, they go spend much of their time playing first person shooter video games and you put a real gun in their hands and body armor then you can expect a bad outcome on occasion.

But the part that is most easily controlled there is not the video game and not the mental health treatment, its the guns.

The primary purpose of automobiles is not to kill. Guns, however, are designed to kill; thats thrir primary purpose. It's not a very good comparison.

EDIT: I see you were refuting a previous claim about guns vs cars. I just wish people would stop comparing the two.

Thank you LadyX It's almost inconceivable the amount of info that gets thrown in, while some other never gets in, as for example why a human being (was she a private in investigator?) was able to legally purchase that many weapons.

"The bandaid effect"Of course some says that if there was another legal gun in the school (maybe the principal) facts could have been different. Answer: use another gun. This is how every war is been started and fought.

This is going to stir a bit of opinions. Choose n Practice Happiness

Life is simple; we are what we eat and what we read. Talk is superfluous.

Some of the comments here remind me of a line from an old comic strip: "We have seen the enemy and he is us."

The US has more than 300 million non-military weapons - almost one per every person, adult and child, in the country. Why? What civilized country lives that way? Americans can sometimes be obnoxious in their exceptionalism, the idea that they are somehow better than the rest of us in the world. This time you are an exception in the circle of civilized countries - and not in a good way.

Those who worship at the shrine of the NRA would have teachers armed. Maybe they would have the students armed too. Training could start in kindergarten. Children could learn to shoot before they learn to read. By high school they could shoot AK-47s or God knows what weapon. Perhaps that could be necessary for high school graduation.

Look at the world you have created. Think about it. The definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. You are right. People kill people. But they kill people with guns. This has to change. I am naively hopeful that this time, finally, the NRA will lose its grip on your Senators and Congressmen and that sensible regulation will follow.

A gunman at Fashion Island in Newport Beach apparently fired more than 50 rounds in a parking lot at the busy shopping mall Saturday before he was apprehended by police, authorities said.

Marcos Gurrola, 42, of Garden Grove, was arrested in the parking lot near the Macy's department store shortly after allegedly firing the shots about 4:30 p.m., said Kathy Lowe, a spokeswoman for the Newport Beach Police Department. Officers on bike patrol apprehended Gurrola as he was standing by a white Honda.

More than 50 rounds from a handgun were recovered at the scene, said Deputy Chief David McGill. A handgun was also recovered at the scene, but police did not reveal any more details about the weapon. The state's landmark assault-weapons law, which went into effect in 2000, banned the use of handgun magazines with more than 19 bullets.

I find it sad that you can debate wether the weapon used was a hand gun or a assault rifle, wether more people are killed by car or guns, as if somehow that makes it ok. The innocents again are the victims now, were in the past and will be in the future until America changes the laws on gun control.

I know this is a generalisation but it would seem that Americans just cannot be trusted with any sort of weapon How many British and other soldiers were killed during the Iraq war by "friendly fire" by their American allies. It would seem that if you give some americans a gun the just feel forced to shoot somebody to prove how big and tough they are.

An odd perspective, but I have a concealed carry permit as part of my job as a jeweler who transports valuable merchandise.Trained extensively; but hope never ever to have a confrontation.Lest I do, I have a first line of defense to protect my life and maybe others.Not everyone is in the same situation as I so I do not expect support."The Gods that smiled when you were bornare laughing now."

I am pro guns, I say if you take away all the guns, the only people who will give there's up will be the law abiding citizens. Meaning only the criminals will have them. More people are assulted with baseball bats than guns each year but no one ever calls for them to be outlawed.

I am pro guns, I say if you take away all the guns, the only people who will give there's up will be the law abiding citizens. Meaning only the criminals will have them. More people are assulted with baseball bats each years than guns but no one ever calls for them to be outlawed.

probably cause i don't recall an incident where 28 people at an elementary school were beaten to death by a single man armed with a baseball bat. do you?

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